Two years ago, the Cooperativa de Plantadores de la Zona de Guariba (Coplana) Cooperative of the Guariba Area Growers which has three companies and more than 10 branches in Brazil, decided to modernize its systems. Up to that moment the company had developed such systems in Cobol.
Coplana is a client of Heurys Tecnología, a sub-distributor of Dash (one of GeneXus distributors in Brazil) with operations in the hinterlands of the state of San Pablo, and headquarters in Ribeirao Preto.
"After the GeneXus presentation, Coplana decided to invest in the modernization of its systems, all of which were developed from scratch with GeneXus. Currently, all of Coplana's systems are developed with GeneXus", said Coplana's IT Manager, Rogério Aparecido de Miguel.
Coplana has 19 systems developed with GeneXus for handling the operations of its companies and branches. Its data bank currently stores 10 Gigas worth of information. Carlos Alexandre Luchini, from Heurys Tecnología, has announced that all of the systems will be migrated into GeneXus 7.5.
Concerning the experience in the use of the last GeneXus version, Luchini explained that introducing the possibility of choosing which editor to use for each GeneXus object has made the work easier, and has led to a price reduction in terms of development. In previous versions, the editor was selected for the whole module.
For instance, the possibility of including ActiveX controls and accessing to its methods and properties directly from the GeneXus objects, for the development of one of Coplana's systems (gas system), eliminated the need to develop native Visual Basic programs for handling the communication of such controls.
Coplana's strength lies in the storage, improvement, and sale of grains and inputs (corn, soy, etc). However, it also owns two companies that provide financial services: CrediCoplana and Coopecredi.
Credicoplana is a credit cooperative for Coplana's employees that offers financing for house and car purchases, etc. Coopecredi (Rural Credit Cooperative) is a bank regulated by Brazil's Central Bank, which provides all of the banking services and works with rural producers, who are members of Coplana, as well as with other people. For more than a year it has provided an Internet Banking Service (http://www.coopecredi.com.br/) to its more than 1,700 clients. This service has been developed with GeneXus 7.5, using the C/SQL generator, and with Microsoft SQL Server 2000 as a data server. Moreover, there are two Credicoplana's systems developed with the last GeneXus version: the backoffice system, and the bank pension services system.
"Our client experimented with Oracle, Magic, and Visual Age tools and decided on GeneXus, among other tools, because with GeneXus we can migrate into another platform anytime", said Luchini.
"Today, GeneXus meets 100% of the company needs", he added.